


New Dawn

by nymphe



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Broken Stiles Stilinski, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hopeful Ending, Hurt Stiles, M/M, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Pre-Relationship, Sad Stiles Stilinski
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 18:04:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18609724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymphe/pseuds/nymphe
Summary: It sucks, but it’s not like he can ask anyone for help. He can’t burden himself on the people he still hopes are his friends, because this is all him. He knows they wouldn’t be able to help him.





	New Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Strap yourselves in, this one hurts. Basically gratuitous self-insert fic inspired by a series of panic attacks I’ve been having recently.
> 
> Title from the Jason Ross song of the same name, which I highly recommend listening to as you read this, because it’s devastatingly heartbreaking, but also hopeful, which is what I hope this fic also is.
> 
> End notes for possible triggers.

Stiles hates the fact, but over the years he’s become sort of well-practiced in the art of working himself out of panic attacks. 

Well, _experienced_ would be more accurate; the first year after his mom died, he’d had them almost weekly, and not always when Scott or his dad was there to talk him through it. So he’d learned to work through them on his own, and, blessedly, after the first year of nearly-weekly attacks, they’d become more infrequent: monthly, and then eventually only on significant dates. The anniversary, birthdays (his and his mom’s and his dad’s, when he was forced to realize that she’d never be there to see another), Christmas, because it was her favorite holiday. The first day of Spring, because mom _loved_ spring, would always drag him to the garden supply store.

Or so he’d _thought_ he’d been capable of effectively working himself out of panic attacks. And then he starts having them all the time again, and they’re not caused by his overwhelming grief.

Because Scott got bitten, and suddenly fairytale monsters were _real_ , and an evil fox spirit took control of his body to hurt people, and Deaton told him he’d be left with a darkness around his heart for the rest of his life.

And it all just....opened the floodgates to a whole new set of triggers, and he’s back to having them monthly, weekly. Every time he’s about to go to sleep, already anticipating the nightmares. And then every time he wakes up, inevitably thrown out of sleep by one.

And they get harder to work through by himself, because the issue _is himself_. His mom’s death isn’t the reason anymore; he is. His guilt is, his darkness is.

He can’t escape _himself_. 

(Technically, he could. But he doesn’t want to think about how. _Can’t_ think about how.)

•

But, because the panic attacks these days are all related to him, they usually happen to him _when he’s alone_. And while he’d been able to work himself out of the mom-related ones out of necessity when there wasn’t anyone else around to help him, he can’t pull himself out of these ones, and when there’s no-one to help, he’s usually forced to let them go on and on and on until he collapses from the exhaustion of them, blacks out from lack of sufficient airflow.

(The nights they make him black out are the best, because blackouts are the only form of unconsciousness that aren’t accompanied by more nightmares.) 

It sucks, but it’s not like he can ask anyone for help. He can’t burden himself on the people he still hopes are his friends, because this is all him. He knows they wouldn’t be able to help him. 

(Or maybe they wouldn’t want to.)

•

_It’s dark. Darker than it should be; he’s outside, but there aren’t any street lights. There are buildings, but the windows are all blacked out. There aren’t any cars, there aren’t any headlights. The only source of light he can find is the moon, and what little light it gives off is being filtered through thick clouds._

_And he’s not alone. There are figures around him, shapes, human-ish silhouettes, but they don’t have faces. They’re just shadows, he can hardly make them out, it’s so dark, they just blend into it. It’s too dark._

_His eyes search the darkness frantically, trying to place where he is, trying to place what those figures are - but they’re too dark, too vague, too wrong. He can already feel his heart racing, knows they’re_ bad _, knows they’re there to take him, hurt him._

_They’re the shadows of his guilt, he thinks. Reminders of the people he’s hurt. They don’t need to have faces; he already knows who they are._

_He needs to leave, get away from them, but he can’t move. He’s frozen, his limbs won’t work, he’s trapped, he’s stuck, he’s surrounded -_

Stiles jackknifes up, gasping for air that doesn’t reach his lungs, and he knows his face is wet with tears and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. He’s shivering, and he can’t breathe out, his lungs won’t work; he just keeps breathing in and in and in, shallow and shaky. _Why won’t this stop_ , he thinks, desperately. _Please, just one night_.

He drops his head in his hands, sobbing, breathing in and in and in, and -

Something moves, in his room. He’s not alone, oh no, the shadow figures followed him out of the nightmare, maybe he’s still _in_ the nightmare, he can’t fucking breathe.

“Stiles,” the shadow says, soft, far away. It sounds like someone he knows, but he can’t look up, if he looks up the shadows will _be there_ , and they’ll descend on him and take him and hurt him and his heart is thundering in his chest and he’s gasping, breathing in and in and in -

“Stiles,” it says again, firmer, but it still feels like it’s spoken through a fog.

 _Please_ , he wants to beg, _please, leave me alone_. 

And then there’s a heavy hand on his shoulder and oh no, shadows shouldn’t be able to touch him physically, right? They’d just go through him, consume him from the inside out, swallow him up and - 

“Stiles!” it yells, and it’s shaking him, and he wants to beg and scream but all he can do is whimper and breathe in and in and in -

“Stiles, please, listen to my voice, it’s me, it’s Derek, I need you to breathe, come on, breathe with me, okay.”

Why would - the shadows in the dream didn’t talk. (They didn’t have to, he already knows what they’d be saying.) And then the voice - the shadow - Derek? is enveloping him - no. It’s not enveloping him. It’s hugging him. Holding him. Rubbing its hand on his back in a slow, cautious circle.

He exhales. It’s shaky, and followed by three or four more rapid, erratic inhales and another exhale.

“There you go, there you are, breathe with me,” and it, _Derek_ , is moving one of his hands from his face to Derek’s chest, and he inhales, exhales.

He doesn’t feel like a shadow. The shadows weren’t moving, weren’t breathing, they were just - there. Menacing, threatening, reminding. Which means - 

“Derek?”

“It’s okay, you’re okay, just breathe with me.” He’s still rubbing circles on his back with one hand, holding his hand to his chest with his other hand, and he inhales, exhales, mirrors the feel of Derek breathing under his palm.

Inhales, exhales. Inhales, exhales.

It’s several long, long moments later before his breathing is under control again, steady and normal.

But now that he can _think_ again, now that the overwhelming panic has dissipated and he can take in his surroundings -

“What-“ he starts, and his voice comes out too-quiet, rough. “What were you doing here?” _What were you doing in my room, I thought you were one of them, I thought you were going to kill me_.

It’s the wrong thing to ask, apparently, by the way Derek stiffens against him, stops moving his hand on his back.

He starts to back up, too, peel himself away. But Stiles makes this involuntary, weak noise of protest, and he stops, resumes rubbing his hand up and down his back.

“I’m an Alpha, it’s my duty to check on my pack,” he says, “I was...worried about you. Rightly so, apparently.”

Stiles isn’t sure what answer he was looking for, what answer he was _expecting_ , but that certainly wasn’t it. Derek considers him pack? Worries about him? After all of the terrible things Stiles has done, the people he’s hurt -

Derek drags his hand down Stiles’ back, and his hand is warm and heavy, comforting. Real. He exhales.

“You don’t have to answer me, if you don’t feel like talking,” Derek says, and his voice is low and soothing, the words spoken in a gentle whisper into the skin of Stiles’ neck. “How often do you have them?”

 _The panic attacks, or the nightmares?_ , Stiles wants to ask. Not like he’d need to clarify, because the answer to both would be the same: all the fucking time.

Instead he shrugs, defensive. He feels small and vulnerable right now, like he’s ten years old and experiencing his first panic attack all over again.

He’s also drained, but he knows if he tries to go back to sleep it’s just going to happen again, and he really doesn’t feel like having two panic attacks in one night.

“I used to get them a lot,” Derek’s saying, “After - after Kate, after the fire. After I found Laura’s body. After Deucalion and Kali took Boyd and Erica, and I thought they were dead.”

Stiles doesn’t have to ask him if he means panic attacks or nightmares, because he already knows he means both.

“I blamed myself, even though I knew it was Kate’s fault. I just kept thinking, if I hadn’t - if I hadn’t let her use me, if I’d caught onto her, my family would still be alive. And then, I blamed myself for blaming myself, letting those thoughts consume me and ignoring Laura when she needed me.” He pauses, and Stiles mirrors him as he inhales, exhales. “When Boyd and Erica were gone, and all I could think about was that I wasn’t a good enough Alpha, that I should’ve protected them.”

Stiles...doesn’t know how to respond, for once in his life. He wants to ask how Derek moved on, if he’ll ever get better, if the panic attacks and the nightmares will ever _stop_ , but Derek’s laying himself bare, here, and Stiles figures he owes him silence while he talks. After everything, his silence is the bare minimum that he can give to Derek.

But then -

“It’s not your fault, Stiles.”

And Stiles... fucking breaks again, just starts quietly sobbing, violent shakes wracking his body.

“You’re so young, you’re stronger than you think for having _survived_. You never should’ve had to go through all of that. You never should’ve had to go through _any_ of that. I’m sorry that it happened to you.”

Derek smooths his fingertips up and down Stiles’ spine, and Stiles hates that he feels so weak, that he’s breaking apart in front of Derek while he just lets him.

“You got through the worst of it,” he says. “You _survived_. You’ll get through this, too. You’ll be okay.”

“How?” Stiles asks, voice wet and broken, minutes later.

Derek’s hand stills, and Stiles wants to protest that, but then he’s leaning up and pressing a kiss into Stiles’ hair, and he feels _cared for_ , protected, safe, like finally someone doesn’t blame him. Like someone is looking at him and not seeing a fucking monster; like someone is looking at him and seeing someone that’s been broken by trauma, clinging desperately to life.

“I wish I could fix this for you, Stiles,” he says, and he sounds desperate, wild, a little broken at seeing Stiles torn apart like this. “I can’t. This is something you have to do yourself. But I want to be here for you, _with_ you, while you heal.”

Stiles clenches his hand in Derek’s shirt where it’s still resting over his heart, clings to him, sobs. Shoves his face against Derek’s chest and breathes in and out for a long while.

“I wanna sleep,” he mumbles, when his sobs finally die out again, and he’s so worn out from all the crying that he thinks it must be hours later. “But I’m scared it’ll happen again.”

He can feel Derek moving above him, vaguely, but he’s too tired to open his eyes to figure out what he’s doing, just prays he’s not leaving Stiles, not now.

His worry is abated when Derek pushes him back into his bed, then crawls in behind him and curls himself around Stiles, evidently having stripped himself of shoes and jeans and jacket.

“I’ll be here for you if it does, Stiles.”

•

(It takes a while. Months, years. Hundreds of nightmares, a thousand panic attacks. Hours of confessions and shared secrets, hoping that speaking it out loud will relieve him of the crushing weight of it.

And, somehow, Derek keeps his word. Is there with him, helps him through all of them, until he feels like he can breathe without choking again.

And when he wakes up one morning, nightmare-free for an entire month, and Derek’s still there, the first breath he takes that isn’t forced through his lungs, he shares that breath with Derek.)

**Author's Note:**

> Stiles has a nightmare, and wakes up to a panic attack, which is described in detail. There’s an implied suicidal thought, but it’s extremely brief and non-graphic and very, very heavy on the _implied_.
> 
> This is very different from my usual brand and I am therefore not 100% sure of what tags are necessary; if you have any tag recommendations, please let me know!


End file.
